Combat readiness, QuickDraw, and you.

[Clockwork]

Now that the shift to new combat is complete, and many of the kinks have been worked out, I'd like to offer another suggestion. 

I'd like to see drawing a weapon take a full combat turn, or perhaps at the least, be exclusive with attacking that turn. In old combat, this didn't matter as much because there were no "turns" and combat was a fluid, race type situation at times. Now, losing a turn to drawing your weapon could have significant consequences. 

This comes up because as it stands, there is no advantage to baring your sword before combat other than intimidation or tipping your hand intentionally.  With this fairly simple change, a bared weapon becomes much more of a threat of violence - one that needs to be answered. 

What this means implementation wise is that the autodraw command would be removed again, so that when someone is attacked, they aren't by default ready to respond in kind, and must ready their weapon first. 

In addition, a "QuickDraw" skill could be added to circumvent this, such that using the skill would enable you to draw and attack in the same turn. The downside of a poor QuickDraw roll could be that your weapon snags and flies out of your hand, leaving you scrambling for it. 

[Clockwork]

Small Addendum:

I would ideally like to see a "draw all" command, so that people who use two weapons can draw them both in a single turn.

[Kinaed]

Anymore player support for these ideas?

[Lei]

Mine! I like it.

[Another]

I like the idea, but rather than having a disadvantage to using it, simply make it not work all the time. The better you are at it, the more often it works. Otherwise you'd simply draw your weapon and that would be your turn.

[Empheba]

With the caveat of me not having used TI:s fight system much at all, I think a turn to ready your weapon(s) sounds reasonable. A quickdraw skill is ok too, but dropping your weapon at a fail sounds like it should be a very rare result - a more common fail would be to simply have to wait one turn like everyone else.
.
Empheba

[Geras]

I'm with Another's suggestion on this one.

[Clockwork]

I can get behind that change.

To offer a bit of background, I've been brought up with the Risk/Reward method of balance; if something offers an edge, there should be a risk of an equal but opposite disadvantage. Otherwise, everyone will do it, and it becomes not an edge, but a requirement (and therefore, just another combat XP sink, which we don't necessarily need.)

[Clockwork]

Proposed spec:

Code: Select all

Syntax: quickdraw
        quickdraw <name> <location> <emote>
        qd <name> <location> <emote>
        quickdraw dual <name> <location> <emote>
        qd dual <name> <location> <emote>
        quickdraw set <message when weapon is quickdrawn>
        quickdraw set dual <message when second weapon is quickdrawn>

The {Cquickdraw{w skill allows you to draw your weapon and attack a target in a single, fluid action (i.e. a single combat turn).  You may only quickdraw one weapon in a round.

Using {Cquickdraw{w without any argument will simply draw your weapon, without incurring the delay before attacking that the {Cdraw{w command suffers from.

The {Cquickdraw set{w command allows you to set the message shown when you draw your weapon using {Cquickdraw{w without any argument.  When using {Cquickdraw{w in combat, this is replaced by the emote supplied in the string.

Note that this proposal includes an idea that using the draw command would incur a small delay before being able to instigate combat. This part of the proposal is so that a player cannot simply draw and attack in one buffered string, which could obviate the need or usefulness of the quickdraw skill and the nature of the proposed change. This goal could also concievably be achieved simply by relying on Help policy twink, but I'm a fan of fixing those issues before they occur.

[Kinaed]

Totally love it when ideas are written up -with- the help file.